Ga. Republicans Moving Against Obama Health Plan

This December 2, 2013 photo shows a woman reading the HealthCare.gov insurance marketplace internet site in Washington, DC. The troubleshooter appointed by President Barack Obama to overhaul a bungled health care website rollout said Sunday that improvements had made a "night and day" difference in handling online traffic. The White House has admitted previously that the launch of Healthcare.gov, where people can sign up for health insurance, was a debacle and the Obama administration pledged that the vast majority of potential customers would be able to enroll online by the end of November. AFP PHOTO / Karen BLEIER (Photo credit should read KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images)

ATLANTA (AP) — Republicans were poised Tuesday to make it even tougher for Georgia to expand a government health insurance program for the poor, undercutting a big part of an overhaul backed by Democratic President Barack Obama.

The election-year legislation was expected to come up for a vote as soon as Tuesday as state lawmakers in the General Assembly held their second-to-last day of the legislative year. By law, Georgia’s state lawmakers meet for 40 working days. Legislators are in a mad rush to pass their bills because any legislation that does not win approval by the final day on Thursday automatically fails for the year.

One of the most significant bills would give Georgia’s Republican-dominated legislature the final say on whether to loosen the rules governing how much money people can make and still qualify for the government-funded Medicaid program. The Democratic health care plan counted on states to expand their Medicaid programs to include people who are too poor to afford subsidized health insurance but otherwise ineligible for government care.

Republican Gov. Nathan Deal has said the long-run costs of expanding the state’s Medicaid system are too expensive. GOP lawmakers want to permanently restrict the governor and his successors from changing course. The measure will likely prove popular with Republican voters during an election year. Deal’s administration projects that an expansion would cost Georgia roughly $48 million in the first full year, or less than 1 percent of the proposed state budget. Deal’s administration projects those costs would rise to nearly $498 million by 2023.

“We believe that a decision about an entitlement program should be made by the legislative branch and not an appointed board,” said state Sen. David Shafer, the Republican President Pro Tempore. “The federal government is trillions of dollars in debt. … We should be careful about doing our long-term planning based on promises the federal government is making.”

Democratic lawmakers say enlarging the state’s Medicaid system is Georgia’s best opportunity to get insurance for an estimated 400,000 people.

“I have never seen a piece of legislation where the majority party voices its skepticism of its own governor,” said state Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta. “We have the greatest treatment, the greatest doctors in the world. The only problem is, not enough Georgians have access to those hospitals.”

Capitol police arrested several people who chanted from the Senate gallery in support of enlarging the Medicaid system, one of several protests that a coalition of groups timed for the final days of the legislative session. A crowd of roughly 100 people later rallied at the Statehouse to protest shortfalls in education funding, the GOP’s refusal to expand Medicaid and other causes.

Rev. Raphael Warnock, the pastor of the Atlanta congregation formerly headed by Martin Luther King Jr., urged politicians to think of the uninsured.

“They are our neighbors,” he said. “They work in restaurants and cook and wash dishes and provide haircuts… They work at the bedsides sometimes of people who have health care.”

Lawmakers also voted to put in place new restrictions on funding for abortions. Under legislation adopted Tuesday, companies selling health insurance on federally run exchanges and the state employee health plan could not pay for abortions except when a pregnancy threatened the life or health of the mother. Democratic opponents said the bill interfered with a woman’s right to get an abortion and allowed no exceptions for women who are raped.

Taxpayers would borrow $17 million to build a parking deck that would largely be used by fans heading to a new Falcons stadium that will be built in Atlanta. That spending was included in a $42.4 state budget adopted by lawmakers Tuesday. It now heads to the governor for approval.

Other measures under debate would:

— Require drug testing for people receiving food stamps;

— Allow Georgia to adopt a medical marijuana program for patients suffering from some illnesses.

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